


How Loud Your Heart Gets

by Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Alcohol, Blight Cure (Dragon Age), Blood Magic, Blood and Injury, Canon Bisexual Character, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gift Exchange, Gift Fic, Grey Wardens, Hawke Left in the Fade (Dragon Age), If You Can't Be With the One You Love, Multi, One Shot, Past Alistair/Female Warden (Dragon Age), Past Anders/Male Hawke (Dragon Age), Post-Canon, Snow, a little smut, love the one you're with, shopping montage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:14:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28051503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard/pseuds/Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard
Summary: “Good news, you wretch,” the jailer said. “You’re getting out of here today, if the lady says so.”Anders did not respond, eyes fixed on Solona’s face as she considered him.  Anders had gained a beard and lost some muscle since they’d last met, and time had left its mark on them too, but she obviously recognized him.“Yes,” Solona said after a lengthy pause, her well-shaped lips pursed in consideration. “I, Solona Amell, do hereby conscript this man into the Grey Wardens.” 'Again,' she did not say out loud.Anders sighed, tossing the crook of his arm back over his face and closing his eyes.  It seemed that his day could still plumb new depths of misfortune.“Oh, fuck me,” he moaned.
Relationships: Anders/Female Warden (Dragon Age), Female Amell/Anders (Dragon Age)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 50





	How Loud Your Heart Gets

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SidheLives](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SidheLives/gifts).



> For Fen'Harem's 2020 holiday gift exchange, Anders and Amell finally get theirs.

Anders did not bother to lift his head when the reinforced door bounced against the stone wall. His cellblock housed minor offenders: drunks, vagrants, vandals. Anders himself fit comfortably into each of those categories, having been apprehended whilst pissing on a monument to fallen Inquisition soldiers. He’d been too drunk to really appreciate the symbolism at the time, but it seemed like a fitting reason for him to occupy his current berth of moldy straw. The door had swung open every half hour or so for the length of Anders’ tenancy in the West Hills jail as detainees sobered up, made bail, or were transferred to more permanent lodging in the other wings. Anders had been sober for two days but lacked funds to make bail, so he imagined the delay was in ginning up more serious charges that would see him consigned to a work crew. That was the best case scenario, anyway; the worst case was that someone recognized him, and he was transferred to the hangman’s row. So there was no reason for Anders to look up. Things could only get worse.

Accordingly, when he heard mailed steps pause at the door to his cell, he was not surprised. Over the course of his life, when things could get worse, they did get worse. He tensed, gathering his mana. Mailed steps probably meant Templars, and Templars meant that someone who had seen one of the countless posters featuring a caricature of his face--fewer, these days, but still more common than ‘lost cat’ fliers--had ratted him out to the local garrison. He’d only have one chance to escape, and that would be before they knew he was awake. 

Just as he was about to unleash the primordial forces of nature on his captors, he heard a woman’s voice say in a quiet, rusty tone: “this one will do.” 

His eyes flew open. 

The last time he’d seen her, she’d worn elaborate silver-and-gold-enameled armor and a legendary blade strapped to her back. Today, the tall, buxom woman was clad in plain, worn mercenary gear, with only a ragged blue and grey armband to indicate her allegiance to the Wardens. Her ashy blonde hair was now short and utilitarian in cut, and she had a new scar along the right side of her jaw. The eyes were the same: too present, too knowing, too sad, he’d always thought. Too familiar to a man who’d been cast out of the same crucible as her. 

Solona Amell, he’d often thought, had come out of the forge of the Circle tempered like steel, while Anders had merely seen his flaws exposed. 

Well. Anders wasn’t the only one who had seen them. Most of Thedas was now familiar with his character deficits, he thought. He might be more famous, or infamous, than the Hero of Ferelden. 

The odds should have dictated that their lives would never again intersect after the eleven years since she’d left their acquaintance at Amaranthine behind them. Leaving the burning rubble of the fortress pointed at the ass-end of her horse had been an excellent decision on her part, and one he should have copied sooner. 

Solona did not so much as wrinkle her nose as the jailer opened his cell and ungently nudged Anders into a seated position, even though Anders knew that after several days of sweating out his last drinking binge, he did not smell of roses. 

“Good news, you wretch,” the jailer said. “You’re getting out of here today, if the lady says so.” 

Anders did not respond, eyes fixed on Solona’s face as she considered him. Anders had gained a beard and lost some muscle since they’d last met, and time had left its mark on their faces too, but she obviously recognized him. 

“Yes,” Solona said, after a lengthy pause, her well-shaped lips pursed in consideration. “I, Solona Amell, do hereby conscript this man into the Grey Wardens.” _Again_ , she did not speak aloud. 

Anders sighed, tossing the crook of his arm back over his face and closing his eyes again. It turned out his day could still plumb new depths of misfortune. 

“Oh, fuck me,” he moaned. 

* * *

Solona did not speak to him as they processed his discharge, nor even once they began walking away from West Hill’s port district. Of course, she’d never been what anyone would call a great conversationalist, but Anders did have a number of burning questions, most of them pertaining to himself. 

She’d signed him out under a pseudonym, which was thoughtful if she did not intend to turn him over to the Templars, but did not necessarily preclude executing him herself. Solona had done a bit of that back in the day, he’d heard. 

“So, where are we going?” Anders asked, a bratty note he’d thought altogether exorcised entering his voice. Old habits, he thought. 

“Out of town,” Solona replied. She didn’t have anything in the way of a pack on her, so he imagined she’d left some supplies somewhere. 

“Oh, I love out-of-town,” Anders said. “One of my favorite places in Thedas. Which particular part?”

“The river,” Solona replied. 

“Hmmm,” Anders said. “Aren’t hills traditional for hangings?” 

“I’m going to throw you in it,” Solona explained, giving him a sidelong glance that held a bit of amusement.

“Untraditional--and also ineffective as an execution method,” Anders pointed out. “I know how to swim.” It was how he’d escaped from the Tower so many times. 

Solona smiled. “Good. You stink.” 

With that she picked up her pace, cutting off further conversation. 

Nearly an hour of walking brought them out of the immediate environs of town and to a hobbled horse and extinguished campfire. The hair on the back of Anders’ neck rose as they passed through several circles of Solona’s wards, doubtlessly left to discourage horse thieves. Solona retrieved a straight razor and a bar of soap from her saddlebag and thrust them at him. 

“I think I have a clean shirt,” she said. “You’re on your own luck for trousers.” 

She pointed down to the river, thickly edged by cattails. 

“You’re kidding,” Anders said, even as he accepted the razor and soap. “It’s three weeks past Firstfall. There’s likely ice in there.”

Solona’s eyes glinted. “I am not kidding. I am not traveling with you while you reek like that.” 

“See, there’s the thing,” Anders said. “I would consider it the greatest of favors if you got on that horse and pretended you’d never met me. Not just now, but ever.” 

Solona lifted her finely-arched eyebrows. She’d stood out in the Fereldan Circle, both for her noble ancestry and for her age when she’d arrived. She’d lost her first tooth running into a potions bench. Irving’s little favorite, the pet of all the senior enchanters. 

“I’m sorry, did I interrupt _your_ plans when I dragged you out of the drunk tank? Is there some reason you need to smell like you just rolled in a sewer?” she asked him. 

Anders flushed red, because it wasn’t as though he enjoyed the sensation of his own skin crawling. “Andraste’s blessed jockstrap. Fine. If I freeze to death, though, I want you to look up the definition of ‘irony’ in a dictionary and read it at my funeral.” 

Solona nodded placidly, and summoned a flame in the circle of her campfire, squatting down to await his return. 

Anders swore vociferously as he fought his way through the reeds and cattails into the icy, swiftly moving water. He scrubbed his skin until it was pink, then scraped down the beard, cutting himself several times in the process. Well, if Solona wanted him completely clean-shaven, she could provide hot water and a shaving brush. 

He reemerged to find the promised clean shirt lying on the grass and his boots and trousers missing and swore some more. 

He stomped back into camp in nothing but Solona’s shirt. It was lucky for her that they were nearly the same size, and it hung loose down to his midthigh. He saw his former clothing spread out next to the fire, damp and steaming in the heat of the blaze Solona had coaxed up in his absence. 

“Did you think I would run off after I got clean?” he demanded.

“Yes,” she said. 

He stewed at her accurate assessment of his plans. 

“Where’s this big Warden mission, anyway?” he demanded. If it was Weisshaupt or someplace terrible, he was going to have it out with her right then rather than waiting for it to come to a head. 

“Denerim,” she responded easily. 

Anders snorted. “You can turn me over to the local Templars rather than make me walk first.” 

Solona sighed in annoyance. “Why would I wait thirteen years to turn you over to the Templars, when I could have done that right away? They don’t even have Circles anymore, haven’t you heard?”

Anders stared at her. Was it even distantly possible that she hadn’t heard about what he’d been up to? Where had she _been,_ anyway? 

“Look,” he told her. “I think you recall things a little differently than I do. I was never really excited about joining the Wardens, and I’ll level with you far enough to say that I’ve gone off the concept entirely. I’m not a Warden anymore.”

Solona blinked big blue eyes at him in mock innocent confusion. There were no innocents raised in Circles. 

“Well,” she said. “I need a Warden to come with me for this. And you did seem very available. Are you saying I should go back to that jail and put someone new through the Joining because you’re afraid to go to _Denerim ?”_

Anders flared his nostrils and did his best to look inscrutable as he glowered at her. She still thought highly enough of him that she’d assume he’d spare someone else his fate if he could. Possibly she was the only person alive in Thedas who held such an opinion. 

She did not so much as blink as she awaited his answer. 

Furious at himself for taking her bait and passing her test, Anders grunted a negative. 

“Thank you, Warden Anders,” she said serenely.

* * *

Anders resigned himself to sleeping rough for the duration of their journey, but Solona immediately surprised him by telling him to put his trousers on once they’d dried, then leading him and her horse back into town. 

They entered through a different gate, heading to the commercial section. They stopped in front of an inn adjacent to the local dwarven merchant’s guild trading hall: it probably wasn’t the best inn in town, this far from the noble quarter, but it was undoubtedly the largest, with stables for dozens of riding horses and carriage drafts, dining rooms, baths, meeting rooms, and a lively front room with a trio of minstrels playing standards from across Thedas. 

It smelled of fresh sawdust and lye soap, and Anders had a sudden pang of homesickness for the Hanged Man, which it resembled not at all. 

“We’re staying here?” he asked, confused. “I don’t know about you, but I’m broke, and I don’t fancy washing dishes for a month to pay to stay here.”

Solona smiled broadly, patting the purse at her hip, and Anders decided to hold his tongue as she requested a suite with two private bedrooms. The skeptical-looking dwarven proprietress demanded payment up front, but upon Solona’s proof of funds, was happy enough to lead them up a warren of wooden stairs to a set of rooms overlooking the small interior garden. 

Solona took tokens for the baths and ordered a large dinner to be brought to their rooms.

“Why did you make me go in the river if we were coming here?” Anders demanded as soon as they were alone again and Solona passed him one of the bath chits. His stomach gave an embarrassing gurgle as he thought about the roast chickens Solona had ordered, and she smirked at him knowingly. He hadn’t eaten more than a few bits of hardtack since landing in jail. 

“They wouldn’t even have let us in,” Solona said reasonably. “Also, I wanted to check whether you were an abomination before I took you somewhere crowded. Now you can get _extra_ clean. Feel free to get a shave and a haircut while you’re down there.” 

Anders gripped the lank hair tumbling loose over his shoulders in one hand and frowned at her. He’d always worn it long. He supposed that was a reason to cut it, though, if they were really going to Denerim.

He couldn’t even bring himself to be offended that she’d thought he might absently slaughter the townsfolk. It wasn’t like it hadn’t occurred to him, back when Vengeance had been riding his mind. 

It would be silly to pass up the opportunity for a hot bath to spite her, anyway, so he obediently went back down the stairs to the basement, where the inn’s boilers provided baths and laundry services. A burly dwarf in a scrupulously clean black leather apron manhandled him into a chair and clipped his hair and beard into what Anders assumed was fashion. Once his skin was stinging from repeated scrubbings, Anders accepted a set of linen pajamas from the bath attendant and consigned his own clothing to the laundry. 

His stomach was an aching pit in his midsection by the time he made it back upstairs and found Solona working her way through a traditional Fereldan spread of cold cuts, cheeses, and fresh bread. She slid a roast chicken across the table to Anders and told him to order seconds if he wanted them. He did want them. He felt like he’d never been full since he’d become a Warden in the first place. 

“Eat more,” she urged. “You look really terrible.” 

Anders nearly snapped out a rejoinder, but her tone was more sympathetic than judgmental. It stiffened his shoulders anyway. Too much like Hawke, dragging him out of his clinic at sunset. _If you look like a scarecrow, my love, you’ll scare away all the patients._

“How are you affording this?” Anders demanded after he stripped the chicken to its bones. “Darkspawn carrying more in the way of pocket change these days?”

Solona gnawed contemplatively on a piece of bread spread with soft cheese. 

“I am the Arl of Amaranthine after all,” she said. 

Anders snorted. “Don’t the Wardens take all those rents?” he asked. 

“Somehow, Varel has neglected to remit those funds to the Wardens,” Solona said, making a long face. “For twelve years. Instead, he’s been depositing them in my account with the Merchant’s Guild.” 

A startled laugh burst out of Anders’ throat.

“And you’re not going to send them off to Weisshaupt like a good little Warden,” he supposed. 

Solona brushed at some crumbs on the table with an elegant forefinger. “The Fereldan chapter of the Grey Wardens has been operating more or less independently of Weisshaupt of late,” she confided.

Anders snorted. “Who’s even in the Fereldan chapter of the Grey Wardens, these days?” 

Solona tapped her finger against her lips. “Well. Let’s see. There’s me and you.”

“ _Very_ independent of Weisshaupt.” 

“And the king,” she noted.

“Forgot he was a Warden, but go on.”

“Avernus up at Soldier’s Peak,” she said, now counting on her fingers. 

“Anyone else?”

Solona fixed him with a bright, brittle smile. “And that’s it.” 

Anders let out a slow breath. “...nobody else?” 

They hadn’t been friends, exactly, but...Maker. Nathaniel. Sigrun. Even Oghren?

The grief in Solona’s eyes was real, and fresh. She didn’t say something about thirteen years being a good run for a Warden. She didn’t say anything at all, just grabbed her wine glass and drained it.

“Down to us,” she said softly. 

“Cheers to that,” Anders said and grabbed his own glass. 

* * *

What minor good feeling Solona had won the previous evening was lost when she pounded on his door just before dawn the next morning with a plan to make it to Highever in two days. He recalled her sleep habits, or lack thereof, as one of his biggest objections with her command style. 

By the time he made it down to the stableyard, he was unhappy to find that she’d bought him a horse and expected him to immediately ride out with her, even though it was starting to drizzle. 

He allowed that he might be sulking, but was further annoyed that she barely noticed. She seemed to take some pleasure in their surroundings as they rode east, occasionally catching glimpses of the sea. This part of the coast was still verdant and green even so late in the season, with basalt cliffs dropping steeply into the water. Solona hummed something sad under her breath--not the Archdemon’s song, thank Andraste. 

“Are you going to force me back to the Wardens after Denerim?” he blurted out when he couldn’t stand it anymore. Serene indifference looked good on her, and it annoyed Anders that he was fundamentally incapable of it. 

Solona lifted her eyebrows in mild reproof. “Force you? I recall you were happy to join.”

Anders growled in his throat. “I was happy not to be executed by Templars. Who then joined the Wardens and tried to execute me _anyway_.” 

“I heard you executed them right back,” Solona retorted. “One of the last letters I got out of Vigil’s Keep before Varel closed it up.”

“Then I suppose we’re even,” Anders gritted out.

Solona did not respond for nearly a minute, and the only noise was the clod of their horses’ hooves in the dirt and the cry of distant seabirds. Her face was contemplative when she finally looked back over at him. 

“Perhaps this was a bad idea,” she allowed.

“Perhaps.”

She looked down at the reins of the horses. “I thought we were friends,” she said in a quieter voice.

Something about that word twisted in his stomach. “Friends. Yes, I suppose we were, right before you fucked off to the Anderfels or someplace for thirteen years without a word.” 

“You’d be surprised how few opportunities there were to catch up on my correspondence from stinking darkspawn breeding pits.” 

“The lack of correspondence was not the focus in my objection, there,” Anders snarked at her.

She met his eyes, teeth gritted. 

“Well, I’m here now, aren’t I?”

She actually looked distressed for the first time, and Anders’ eyes narrowed as he made some further suppositions. 

“You didn’t just happen upon me in that jail, did you?”

Solona got control back over her face.

“No,” she admitted. “I got a letter telling me that I’d better collect you before the Templars did.” 

Anders snorted. “Who knew I was in West Hill?” 

“The Divine.” 

“Fine, don’t tell me.”

Solona waved her hands in the air. “No, really! I get back to Ferelden after thirteen years, the Circles are gone, the Wardens became a death cult, the sky is messed up, and they’ve elected my lunatic Orlesian friend the Divine.”

Anders swallowed. He vaguely recalled encountering a Chantry personage when railing about what the Inquisition had done to Hawke, just before Varric bundled him out of Skyhold and put him on a horse headed north with the coin Anders had finished drinking off the night he was arrested. 

“The Wardens were always a death cult,” he said weakly. “I thought you knew.”

Solana laughed mirthlessly. 

“Yeah,” she allowed. “So what else is new?”

Anders stared at her wordlessly.

“No really,” she said. “What have you been doing?”

He wondered how long they’d go without talking about it. 

“Your cousin, mostly,” he said, feeling catty. She could ask him directly about the Kirkwall Chantry if she really wanted to know. 

She chuckled. “Bethany?”

“No, Malcolm.” 

She barely blinked. “Ah. How is he?”

She hadn’t heard? “Dead.” 

Hawke had been the loudest person Anders had ever met. The only man in Kirkwall who knew more people than Varric. The center of every room, the subject of every conversation. And he’d died alone. 

He supposed Solona really hadn’t known. “I’m sorry. We never met,” she added after a beat, her voice softer. “How was he?”

“Good,” Anders said, after taking a minute to think about it. “Hawke was good.” 

* * *

They reached Highever in late afternoon on the second day, just as Solona had predicted. They took rooms at another dwarven inn, as before, but this time Solona suggested that they eat at a restaurant. Anders couldn’t think of a reason to object, and they went to an Antivan establishment on the edge of the great square before the local Chantry, with small circular tables and high-top stools arranged to allow diners a view of the statues lining the grand promenade. Anders might have thought that was a pointed choice, but Solona barely looked at the building, grey stone turned silver and rose in the sunset, instead gazing down the row of statues.

“That’s Duncan,” she said, pointing out a monument of a man in Grey Warden armor on a rearing battle horse. “He’s the man who recruited _me_. Ali--the king put the monument up a few years ago, I heard.”

Anders couldn’t recall the last time he’d eaten in a restaurant, assuming the Hanged Man did not count, and it was best not to count on the food served there. Even Varric had hired runners to bring meals in rather than trust the fried meat bits offered to incautious drinkers at the Kirkwall tavern. Justice had required Anders to put every spare coin back into the coffers of the Mage Underground. 

“All men in armor look the same to me,” Anders said after a moment’s contemplation of the statue that held Solona’s attention. 

“He wasn’t even really from Highever,” Solona said, grabbing a basket of flatbreads from the sideboard. “He grew up in Orlais. I don’t think...the king even knows that.” 

“Probably not, if he put the statue up.”

“Well, it’s not like he built it himself,” Solona groused. 

Anders couldn’t figure out where she was going with the line of conversation. 

“Turns out _Duncan_ was recruited off the hangman’s row from Val Royeaux,” Solona said. “He eventually decided to be Warden, though. Very committed.” 

“Is this an inspirational tale?” Anders asked. 

“No,” Solona said. She sighed. “What do you want to do, Anders?” 

That shocked him--he’d been very used to thinking of his life as imminently over with. 

“I’ve been advised that my goal-planning is very suspect,” he hedged. 

She looked at him knowingly. “Do you want to talk about that?”

“No.” He helped himself to a dish of green olives in oil and pepper, then tore off another hunk of flatbread. “Actually, yes. I’m not sorry for any of it.” 

Solona propped a cheek on her hand, picking at her own bread. “I’m not here to chide you. I just thought you might want to tell me about it.” 

“Really,” Anders said, unconvinced. Even Hawke hadn’t approved, and he’d seen Meredith’s evil firsthand. 

Solona snorted. “I’m not sure I’ve got any moral authority left. How am I supposed to be picky about a religious building when I let all of Amaranthine burn?” 

Anders’ response was forestalled by their waiter bringing a bottle of wine and a very large ham. Solona smiled at the man, nothing in her expression indicating that Anders had started a war and Solona had burned down the second-largest port in Ferelden. “Thank you, can we try the cheese plate?” she asked. 

“It wasn’t about the building,” Anders said when they were alone again. 

“I didn’t think it was,” Solona allowed. 

“It was…”

And Anders found himself explaining himself, much more truthfully than Varric had in his damnable book. Justice. The Circles. Hawke. Solona kept his wine glass full and paused to make all the appropriate noises as he spoke. An urchin came along with a pole and candle to light the oil lamps hanging around the square, and the shadows grew and deepened into night. Anders’ voice nearly went hoarse. 

At last he took in a deep breath, and explained, his voice a little shaky, that Hawke had left him behind to go to the Inquisition. That Hawke had been looking for an excuse to leave him, Anders thought, ever since they left Kirkwall. 

That was now almost three years past, but really the end of Anders’ story. 

“And Justice?” Solona asked, her tone curious but more sympathetic than he likely deserved. 

“I haven’t heard from him since Kirkwall,” Anders said. “I think that was--his purpose. What he stayed here to do.”

Solona frowned at her wine glass, swirling the dregs in her cup. 

“Still doesn’t answer my question, though,” she said. “What do _you_ want to do?” 

Anders laughed darkly. “I don’t know. After all, I’m still a Warden. Not die in the Deep Roads for a few years, then do, I suppose?” 

“Hmmph,” Solona said, unsatisfied with his answer. “Well, think about that,” she told him. 

“You mean there’s options?” Anders asked. “Kill these darkspawn, instead of those darkspawn? Be your insubordinate, rather than the First Warden’s?”

“Sure,” Solona said. “Maybe some other ones, too.” 

Anders grunted in acknowledgement, even as he wondered what she meant. 

“Well, for right now, I would like to finish this bottle of wine, and then I would like them to bring out some more olives,” he said, refilling both their glasses. 

“I’ll drink to that,” Solona replied. She squinted at her wine glass. “To Justice,” she said softly, clinking it against his.

* * *

The first snows of winter came in the day they reached Amaranthine. No sooner had they checked into their inn than Solona was gripping Anders’ arm and dragging him out into the street again.

“It’s snowing,” he pointed out, blinking at the flakes that caught in his eyelashes and newly shorn hair. 

“I love the snow,” Solona said, in a tone that startled him for its issuance out of the throat of the Commander of the Grey. He calculated her age, realizing with a start that if he correctly recalled her being a few years younger than him, she might not be thirty yet. “Especially first snow. Every year I asked if I could go outside to see it, and every year Irving said ‘next year.’” 

Anders grimaced at the memory of Kinloch Hold. Even Kirkwall had let mages into the courtyards of the Gallows to feel the sun and rain on their faces; Ferelden had denied its mages that small pleasure. It was amazing in retrospect that any of them had made it out alive and halfway sane. 

Anders did not count himself among that number, and likely not Solona either, but he had heard that the First Enchanter was still doing well, the bastard. 

“By all means, let’s go stand outside in the snow, then,” Anders said, offering his arm like a gentleman. Solona took only a moment to figure it out, then wrapped her arm around his. 

Amaranthine had prospered since they left. The market was now mostly enclosed in new stone and wood stalls. Merchants had built out a new trade quarter against the former walls of the city, which now contained mostly houses for the growing bourgeoisie. Solona held onto his arm as they peered into windows and stalls. 

“Are we shopping for something?” Anders asked. 

“Maybe,” Solona said inscrutably. She brushed her free hand over her armor: it was worn and battered, and there were tooth marks on the leather straps holding her pauldrons on. 

“New armor?” Anders guessed. She’d worn much better at Vigil’s Keep. 

“Maybe,” she said again. Then she took a decisive turn and backtracked to the last shop they’d passed, a dressmaker’s.

A bell rung as she pushed the door open. Anders followed her in, perplexed. 

The shop was well-appointed, with an Antivan carpet on the floor and thick cream curtains draping the walls. Half a dozen dummies depicting gowns in varying fashions and states of completion clustered at the front window. 

A dark-skinned woman with her hair up in two elaborate knots poked her head out from the back of the shop. A measuring tape was draped around her neck, and Anders presumed that she was the proprietress. 

She welcomed them cautiously in Rivaini accents, taking in Solona’s armor and Anders’ tattered peasant clothes. 

“Are you interested in a dress?” she asked when Solona stayed mute.

When Solona still did not answer, she looked to Anders, who was equally perplexed. 

“A robe, maybe?” Anders said, looking at Solona in confusion. None of the clothing in this store appeared to be enchanted or designed for combat. 

At that, Solona finally shook her head. “No, I--a dress. Do you have any ready-made?”

The proprietress pursed her lips, considering their state. “I have a few nearly completed, needing only minor adjustments. But the price--” she named a figure that would pay a month’s lodging. That seemed to settle Solona a bit.

“Yes,” Solona said. “I understand. Can I try on that one?” She pointed at one of the dummies, clad in an Orlesian-style gown with a full skirt and ruffled bodice. Anders looked at Solona in growing bafflement, but she evaded his gaze. 

The proprietress readily agreed, shuffling Solona off to the rear of the shop and sending Anders to a cluster of uncomfortable armchairs where footmen and less-fortunate husbands were consigned to wait while women tried on dresses. He went, bewildered, wondering if Solona were looking for a disguise. 

After nearly a quarter of a candlemark, Solona reappeared, wearing the gown. It was dark green satin slashed with grey, and it suited her very poorly. It washed out her pale features, even with the rose of the snow still in her cheeks. 

“What do you think?” she asked, giving a small swish of her hips.

“...for?” Anders asked. He supposed she could hide a number of weapons in those full skirts, but he didn’t see the point. 

“Wearing,” she snapped, in a tone that was equal parts exasperation and nervousness.

“Are you...worried about this?” he asked, incredulous. “I saw you stab a spectral dragon in the eye once.” 

She made a face at him and turned to regard herself in the full-length beaten bronze mirror opposite the front window. She smoothed her palms down the front of the dress, fingers playing at the lace edges of the bodice. 

“I’ve never bought a dress before,” she said in a small voice. “Only robes and armor.”

That made the pit in his chest where Justice used to live tremble a little. Anders bit down on the inside of his cheek and stood up. He walked up behind her and turned her by the shoulders so that her profile was to the mirror.

“I think you want a different style,” he said, keeping his tone muted. “Something that focuses more on your shoulders, and less on your…” he waved a hand vaguely at her chest.

“Tits,” she said bluntly. 

“...less skirts,” he said when he recovered from that. 

Solona rubbed her palms over her face. “We can just go,” she offered. 

“No, no,” Anders said, committed now. “If you want one, you should have one. Maybe something more Rivaini? Straight or wrap skirt. A lighter color, too.” 

The dressmaker, standing in the doorway, nodded silent assent to his analysis. 

“What do you know about it?” Solona asked him suspiciously. 

“I like looking at pretty women in pretty dresses as much as the next man,” Anders defended himself, recalling his fifth escape from Kinloch Hold, passed pleasantly at the estate of a wealthy young widow in Redcliffe. 

Solona brushed her hands again over the dress. She took a deep breath. 

“Alright,” she allowed. 

* * *

Several hours later, Solona left with two dresses in shades of blue, one of which the dressmaker confessed to making for her own daughter. After making the big sale, the proprietress had called up into the residence over the stop and coaxed a barely-worn suit of clothes away from her husband to be bestowed upon Anders, explaining that she could not allow one of her dresses to be worn in his ragged presence. 

Solona seemed supremely relieved to pack up their purchases and head back to the inn. Anders carried their parcels against his chest, feeling oddly domestic. 

“Oh look,” Solona said, stopping at a stall that held scarves and jewelry under glass cases. “Do you remember? You had an earring like that.” She very diplomatically forbore mentioning that she’d given it to him. 

“I had to sell it for passage across the Waking Sea,” Anders said, thumbing his earlobe. The hole had long since closed. 

“Want another?” she asked, smiling at him from under blonde lashes. 

He flushed, unsure why. 

“I’d have to pierce it again, then keep it clean. Better not,” he said. 

“If only we knew a healer capable of minding an injured earlobe,” Solona said with mock sadness. 

Anders snorted. “Well, why don’t you pierce yours, then? Match the dress,” he said, pointing out a pair of pearl drops. 

Solona’s lower lip twisted as she considered it. 

The stall vendor, sensing a possible sale, quickly offered up a needle and a chunk of raw onion if they were buying earrings. 

Anders expected Solona to call it off even as he held the needle over the flame of a candle to sterilize it. Instead, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes, running the pad of her thumb over the pearls. 

He took her chin in a gentle grip with one hand to turn it, then caught her earlobe between two fingers.

“Ready?” he said, oddly reluctant to do it.

“Maker’s breath, I’ve been shot with crossbows,” she said, annoyed now. But she didn’t open her eyes. 

He jabbed her cleanly with the needle, quickly slipping the earring in as soon as he pulled it out. Two red drops of blood welled out, and she fumbled him a handkerchief to blot them up. She didn’t flinch when he turned her head to repeat it on the other side. 

She looked up at him once she had both pearl drops in her ears, her expression oddly vulnerable. 

He almost made a smart remark about genlocks hearing them jingle, but managed to suppress his natural inclination to stick his foot in his mouth, for once. 

“Looks nice,” he managed. In a different world, where magic and the Blight did not decide their fates, she would have been a noble lady in Kirkwall, and he would have farmed in the Bannorn. She would have worn pearls from the time she came of age, and he would have lived and died without seeing one. 

“Want me to do yours?” she asked, flustered. 

“No, I’m fine,” he said. “I think I’m past it, as a fashion. But it looks good on you, though.” 

Her smile was faint, and Anders held onto it as they returned to their inn, their steps leaving momentary hollows in the snow. 

“Where are you planning to wear that dress?” he asked once they were dining on roast sturgeon in the lively common room. He’d never cared for fish until he lived by the sea; now it reminded him of Kirkwall. 

“Denerim,” Solona explained again. “We’re going to Denerim, remember?” 

“I thought by ‘Denerim,’ you meant ‘Some Benighted Deep Roads Entrance Near Denerim,’” Anders said skeptically. 

“In all likelihood, we will kill absolutely nothing and nobody on this mission,” Solona told him, reserve restored now that they were out of the mystifying realm of ladies’ fashion. 

“And are you willing to detail this mission to me yet?” Anders asked. 

“No. Confidential, by orders of the Commander of the Grey,” Solona easily replied. 

“That’s you,” Anders pointed out. 

“Yes,” she agreed, a little sadly. “That’s me.” 

* * *

Anders had been sleeping like a baby for the previous couple of weeks with the novelty of being well-fed, clean, and bedded down on a nice wool mattress. His past caught up to him that evening in the form of an archdemon calling out a song of death and blood in his dreams. Anders thrashed himself awake in the starched white linens of his rented bed and staggered to the basin and ewer to throw some cold water on his face. He knew from thirteen years of bitter experience that it was better if he woke all the way up before attempting sleep again; it gave the connection between himself and the Blight time to dissipate. He pulled back the sash of the curtain to peer out into the darkness, gauging it to be still before midnight. Snowflakes stuck to the window and melted. There would be inches of it on the ground tomorrow. 

He listened for the sound of sleet against the window, wondering whether it would be safe to travel on to Denerim, when he heard a sound. A moan, or a muttered curse. And Anders recalled that for the first time in more than a decade, he was not the only Grey Warden there vulnerable to the song of the Blight. 

He heard it more clearly when he went out into the little sitting room, where the fire had been banked for the evening. Anders crept to the door to Solona’s room and put his cheek against the wood. Yes, she was going through it--half-intelligible protests and phrases swallowed down her throat. He hesitated, wondering if she’d want him to do anything at all. She’d been handling darkspawn nightmares longer than he had, after all.

With a sigh, Anders cast around for something he could use to pick the lock, only belatedly thinking to try the doorknob. It opened easily in his hand; she’d locked the door to the hall before retiring, but not the one to her bedroom. 

Feeling like an intruder, he walked with an unnatural stiffness to her bedside. Solona slept with several lanterns still lit around the room, and her form in the middle of the bed was well-illuminated. Solona Amell was a living legend, and she retained a Circle mage’s fear of the dark. 

“Commander,” he said in a whisper, and felt very stupid. “I mean, Solona,” he said in a normal voice. She continued to toss and turn, her face tormented. 

Anders gingerly leaned over to poke her in the shoulder, leaping back to avoid any reprisals. He’d accidentally bloodied Hawke’s nose that way once. Hawke had thought it was funny, Anders had not. 

Solona came to, groping for a weapon Anders thought she didn’t have on her, but which turned out to be under her pillow. 

When she recognized him, she released the hilt on her dagger and set it on her bedside table. This was not the reaction Anders now engendered in most people, so he appreciated it. 

“Oh, sorry,” she said. “Sorry, that was a bad one.” Her shoulders were shaking, and he saw sweat beading on her neck. 

Anders shook his head, going to her ewer to pour her a drink, thinking better of it, and going for the bottle of whiskey he’d seen her stash in her pack. 

He sat down on the edge of the bed and handed her a finger of whiskey. She took a sip, winced, and put the cup aside.

“Alcohol makes it worse, I’ve found,” she said. “I’m still running from the Archdemon, but _drunk_.” 

“Oh, I drink to feel better about being a Grey Warden while I’m _awake_ ,” Anders responded. “Gives me something to do while I’m up in the middle of the night.”

Solona nodded in agreement. “Sometimes I get up and go on a walk,” she said.

“Well, it’s still snowing,” Anders pointed out, now feeling awkward for his presence in her bedchamber in the middle of the night. Standing up and leaving would feel like abandoning her to the Archdemon, though. 

Solona sat up in bed, looking at the window, though it was a solid pane of black. It was cold in her room because she had not drawn the curtains. 

“Did I wake you up?” she asked. “I apologize.”

He shook his head. “No, I had the same one.”

Solona sighed. “Of course. Want to play some cards, then? I won’t be able to fall asleep again for a while.”

She rubbed her cheeks with her palms, the pearl drops catching the lantern light as they trembled in her earlobes. He hadn’t considered that she’d have to wear them until they healed, and he’d bet she hadn’t either. She’d be the loveliest warrior this side of the Donnarks if they did end up in the Deep Roads. 

“I owe you money already,” Anders said. “And I never win at cards.” 

“You don’t owe me anything,” Solona faintly protested. She sat further up in bed. “What do you do when the dreams keep you awake?”

Anders’ mouth twisted. “Well, there’s drinking, we’ve been over that. Feeling sorry for myself, which I don’t recommend. I used to write anti-Templar essays, but I think I’ve now gotten _that_ point across. Sex is a personal favorite, but…” 

He caught himself. Propositioning the Commander of the Grey was probably classifiable as suicidal ideation. 

“Okay,” Solona said, her voice neutral. 

Anders’ mouth twisted in self-disdain. He heard Solona swallow.

“Okay, we can do that,” she repeated. 

He swung his head to stare at her, still unsure that he’d taken her meaning correctly. Her expression was casual, mouth set in a flat line. He nearly snapped at her that that he didn’t need a pity fuck along with the food, the bed, and the bail money, she’d done quite enough to make it up to him already. But then he noticed that her chest wasn’t moving: Solona was holding her breath.

And it occurred to him that notorious anti-Templar terrorists and Grey Warden commanders might find themselves in similar positions when it came to romantic opportunities or the lack thereof. So he frowned and held very still as he let her decide whether she was serious about her offer. 

She was; she sat up straighter and pressed one narrow, calloused palm against his chest. He wondered whether she could hear his heart thudding against it. Like it was the first time, not just the first time in years. 

Solona had to duck her head to kiss him from her position, and she was awkward about it. Too much lips, not enough tongue. He wondered whether anyone had ever kissed her in the Circle, whether anyone had since. He’d thought about it, more than once, years before, but she’d been so brittle and aloof. Those Fade spells she’d cast made her seem like half a ghost, and the hurt in her eyes hadn’t anchored her any further. He’d always had the impression that she was surprised, every day, to find out that she was still alive. Any thought he’d had of demonstrating they were both still there had failed under his dawning awareness of the death she’d shared with him. She’d already known what it meant to be a Warden; he hadn’t appreciated it until months later. 

Tonight, though, she kissed him like the girl she hadn’t gotten to be, and when he slowed her down and cupped her face with his hands, she seemed to recall how it was done, kissing him with more skill. She didn’t feel compelled to confess how long it had been, so he didn’t either. He just enjoyed the simple pleasure of her body against his. She smiled against his mouth when he let his hands fall to the buttons of her nightshirt, then smiled wider when his hands fumbled on them. Anders got a couple undone, and then she grabbed the fabric at her waist and pulled it off over her head. 

She shivered as the cold air pebbled her breasts, then when Anders lowered his head to kiss them. He ran a hand down her side to soothe her and to feel the ropy texture of her scars against his palm. Some of them he’d healed himself, others she’d gained since. 

“You sleep in your clothes?” she asked, pulling at his shirt where it was tucked into his trousers.

“Ready to run. Habit,” he said. She grunted in acknowledgement, tugging it over his head. 

Anders stilled, thinking that he wasn’t much to look at these days, but Solona seemed happy to get her hands on his bare skin. He’d largely avoided serious injury in the years since they’d met, but that had been mostly due to Hawke careening around with a two-handed sword, drawing everyone’s eyes away from Anders. On and off the battlefield. 

Anders had the piercing thought that he’d have liked Solona. Hawke had liked everyone, but he’d liked the odd ones, the hurt ones. The ones who didn’t even know they needed someone else to take care of them. 

Anders slid a hand between Solona’s thighs, thinking that this, at least, he was still good for. He thought he still recalled how to show a woman a pretty good time. She murmured soft encouragement as he slid her smallclothes off. Smiled when he brushed his fingers through her folds. Arched her hips when he worked one inside her. Then made a shocked noise when he leaned down to press his lips where his fingers had been. 

It was a sad world, Anders reflected, where men expected women like Solona to lead armies and fight darkspawn, but did not bother to demonstrate cunnilingus. Her surprise did not indicate disapproval--the converse, if anything. It was with mingled pride and indignance that he redoubled his efforts, pulling one of her thighs over his shoulder. Solona’s hand stroked through the soft spikes of his hair, and he had a rush of something that felt close to tenderness. It was like poking a bruise, or flexing an unused muscle. Her fingernails scraped his scalp as she got close. The muscles in her thigh contracted against his neck. She wasn’t loud, though--Circle mages and Grey Wardens couldn’t afford to be, he supposed. 

“Go ahead and yell,” he said as he pressed the pad of his thumb against her. “Fuck anyone who’s listening.” 

Solona gave a strangled laugh as he bent his head back down, then moments later managed something close to his name, which was a nice touch. He worked her through it until she pulled away with a lingering hand on top of his head. He crawled up her body to kiss her again between her soft breasts.

Solona tossed her arms loosely around his shoulders without even seeming to think about it. 

She was breathing hard, her cheeks attractively flushed, and Anders found himself devoutly hoping, for her sake, that he wasn’t the only person in the world who knew what Solona Amell looked like coming down off a decent orgasm. 

She brushed a hand through the patchy hair on his chest, then followed the trail of it down to where it disappeared into his trousers with a crooked knuckle. She shot him a questioning look as she let her hand rest over the seam. 

“Don’t feel obligated,” Anders said. “I think I’ll sleep well now, regardless.” 

Solona shot him a ‘don’t be stupid’ look. “What if,” she asked, pulling at the knot of his laces, “we just let ourselves have the things we wanted for once?” She ran the heel of her palm against his cock where it was trapped in the rough fabric of his trousers, as though to emphasize the point. 

“And they call me radical,” Anders said, wriggling out of the fabric without trying to look graceful about it. He closed his eyes when Solona ran a gentle, exploratory finger across the length of his cock, shivering in anticipation when she took a firmer grip at the base. 

“What would you like me to do?” she asked with less bravado than he’d expected. “My repertoire is not extensive, but I--” 

Anders chuckled, grabbing her hand and bringing her knuckles to his mouth. He sucked two between his lips in a kiss and smiled down at her.

“It’s the middle of the bloody night, Solona. We can try something complicated tomorrow. Just wrap your legs around me, sweetheart.” 

She didn’t bristle at the endearment, instead taking him at his word. She lay back against the pillows with her arms out to him and her face welcoming. 

Anders thought as he leaned over her, though, that complicated was never going to be what he wanted again. 

* * *

Anders woke up before Solona, wonder of wonders. If her sexual satisfaction was the key to gaining a more reasonable waking hour, he thought he had the makings of a routine in mind. 

He untangled herself from her sweet, sleepy embrace and staggered back to his own room to take care of morning ablutions. He scratched at his stubble, thinking that if he weren’t a complete prat, he’d bring her breakfast or something. There was a time in his life that he’d performed domesticity fairly well, before other things had started to seem more important. But that had involved both funds and knowledge of local bakeries, of which he had neither. So Anders cast a small fireball into the furnace in the corner of the sitting room and decided to hunt in Solona’s pack for a kettle and tea, at least. 

There was a sense of wrongness as he unpacked bandages, extra socks, and wafer rations, and it did not dissipate after he located the kettle and little waxed sack of tea. Frowning at Solona’s bedroom, where he did not yet hear her stirring, Anders kept pulling items out of her pack until he got to the bottom. His hand shook by the time he found a wooden case at the bottom with heavy lead bands wrapping it shut. 

Touching it was difficult, his skin crawled so badly. But he forced himself to continue. The wooden box contained a dagger made of a solid piece of obsidian. The grip and hilt were impossibly made of the same black stone, so dark it seemed to suck up all the light in the room. 

Just looking at it made the Blightsong keen in his ears. 

Anders grabbed one of Solona’s socks and used it to pick the evil thing up. Something told him that he didn’t want to touch it with his bare skin. 

He carried it into Solona’s bedroom, where she had just swung her legs over the edge of the bed.

“Why do you have this thing?” Anders asked, trying not to make it sound like an accusation. He suddenly doubted her assurance that she wasn’t killing anyone on this mission. The dagger fairly oozed dark magic. It wasn’t the sort of thing anyone carried around casually. 

Solona didn’t look at all guilty. 

“I’m going to cure the Grey Warden taint,” she said. “Or die trying.” 

* * *

Solona refused to talk about it until they were back on the road. Their horses objected to leaving their warm stables to head out onto the snowy road, an impulse Anders mentally seconded. Once they were moving, though, breaths steaming in the morning air and muscles loosening from the exercise, Anders appreciated that it was probably best to talk about Solona’s plans where they did not risk anyone besides Anders growing incredibly alarmed. 

“Don’t tell me you’re doing blood magic,” he begged. They were headed southeast along the main road to Denerim, but this time of year, there were no other travelers in sight. The layer of fresh snow hushed the wind and birds, and his words felt echoing.

“Fine, I won’t tell you,” Solona replied easily. 

Anders gritted his jaw. She’d had the same education as him, she knew the dangers. Maker, she’d been in the Circle during Uldred’s uprising. 

“What demon gave you that dagger?” he demanded instead. “Can’t you feel how awful it is?”

Solona snorted. “Nobody gave me the dagger. I had to go and steal it myself out of Weisshaupt. After thirteen bloody years of asking questions that nobody wanted to answer for me.” 

“Yes, Weisshaupt, the place where the Wardens keep all the terrible things they don’t want to unleash on all of Thedas? And you brought it here?” 

Solona was not at all pressed by his logic. “Technically, the dagger belonged to the prior First Enchanter of Kinloch Hold.”

“Who got it…?”

“When Duncan stabbed him to death with it,” Solona said cheerfully. 

“Solona, blood magic will just get you and everyone around you killed,” Anders scolded her.

“We’re already dying,” she pointed out with a look more diamond-edged than the snowy morning. “And it started with blood magic. When we undertook the Joining. That’s how it ends.”

“I’m not going to Denerim to watch you die,” he warned her. 

Solona pulled up the reins of her horse.

“Then don’t come, Anders,” she said very seriously. “You’re a healer, and I think I may need one. And I mean to cure you too. If you think you know better, don’t come. But I trust the source of this spell. I trust her more than the Wardens, anyway.” 

“We’re going to Denerim because you mean to cure the king, too,” Anders guessed. He searched his memory. Hadn’t he heard a rumor…

He nearly asked her about it, but then flushed, figuring it was none of his business. 

“Yes. It’s time for the Wardens to end. Or at least, for the taint to end. It ends with me,” she said. 

She sounded as righteous as he ever had. More, because she was being driven by her own beliefs, not a spirit with its claws dug into his mind. He wondered whether Hawke had ever felt this terrified for him. 

“Alright,” Anders finally said. “We’ll go to Denerim to use blood magic on the king. It’s not like my reputation can get any worse.”

* * *

Denerim was the same muddy pit that he remembered, but Solona did not take them to the dwarven merchant’s quarter, as he’d expected. Instead, they skirted the city walls until they came to a cluster of stone buildings that reeked of grain mash. A brewery, he thought. 

As they settled their horses in the small lean-to stable outside the main building, a redheaded woman tossed the door open and skipped across the courtyard to warmly embrace Solona. It seemed they were expected. 

“Maker, look at you!” the brewer exclaimed, looking Solona up and down. “The Hero of Ferelden, gracing my doorway!” 

“Bella, this is Warden…” Solona belatedly realized that she ought not to mention his name, and Anders stepped in.

“Roland,” he supplied. It was his given name, though he’d cared to share it with neither the Circle nor the Wardens. 

Bella turned to him and then gave him the same bosom-y hug she’d bestowed on Solona. 

“What can I do for the Wardens?” she asked with a wink after releasing him, Anders a little dazed. 

Solona smiled at the older woman. “If we could just prevail upon you for use of your guest room and freshen up, we’re going to the palace.” 

Bella readily agreed, leading them into her business, chattering about how the good King Alistair ordered all his ale from her brewery. The barrels were all stamped with a stylized griffon. 

Anders hadn’t much liked the king, either time that they’d met, so he considered rubbing his face with a wet towel to be fine enough preparation for the third. Solona, however, disappeared into Bella’s laundry room with their pack, determined to bathe and change. 

He wouldn’t have told her to buy the dress if he’d known it was to wear for another man. Or to die in. 

“Do you have another room?” Anders asked when Bella ran out of stories about how Solona and Alistair had saved Redcliffe, Solona and Alistair saved Ferelden, Solona and Alistair saved Bella and the entire world. 

Bella shot him an odd look. “Solona’s note said she’d just need the one?” 

Anders gritted his teeth. Solona would be staying at the palace, he supposed. He dragged the rest of their packs into Bella’s cozy guest room, shut the door, and retrieved the cursed dagger. 

The light didn’t shine off of it, no matter which direction he turned it. When he sent a cautious, exploratory tendril of magic at the blade, it seemed to vanish as though severed from the Fade itself. Feeling reckless, Anders pressed a fingertip to the sharp tip of it. Blood welled out before he even felt the sting of it, and he stuck his finger in his mouth. He couldn’t taste the copper of it. Well, he was already tainted, anyway. 

“Andraste bless it, stop that,” Solona cried, opening the door and seeing him with the black blade.

She was dressed in the blue dress from Amaranthine with its narrow skirt and closely-tailored sleeves, her short hair tucked back behind her ears to show off the pearl drops, and Anders was dreadfully afraid this was the last time he was going to see her wearing any of it. 

“Blood will show on that dress,” he said, because he couldn’t help but say something awful. 

Solona pursed her lips at him, unimpressed. She held out her hand for the dagger, and he reluctantly handed it over.

“I packed a change of clothes,” she said. “Bring whatever healing supplies you think you might need. Bandages, certainly.”

“Maker, Solona, how much blood does this spell need?” he begged her. 

She lifted her hands in the air in an elaborate show of ignorance. 

* * *

If Bella had been expecting them, the Denerim royal palace had not. The gate guard did not quite believe Solona when she explained that they were Wardens, for all they were well-dressed, or perhaps because of it. Solona had to rummage in her pack until she found the seal of the Commander of the Grey, and then that only got them passed along to the seneschal. 

Solona’s mood was diminishing with every step they took closer to the heart of the castle, he could discern, because she stood up straighter, spoke less, and seemed to lose her very color under his gaze. 

The seneschal squinted at Solona like he recognized her, and she cooly reminded him that she’d beheaded Ser Cauthrien of Gwaren in the same room where they were detained. That got her the stink-eye, especially since Anders could see that there was still a discoloration on the flagstones by the door. But the seneschal eventually ushered them into the throne room, warning them that the king was hearing petitions for the rest of the afternoon. 

The room was plain timber and stucco, but nearly obscured by hundreds of years of war banners and battle trophies. Several dozen commoners crowded the rear of the room, and even more nobles filled the balcony overlooking the steps to the throne. 

Solona seemed content to slink in along the back wall with Anders in tow and wait on the benches at the rear of the commoners’ gallery. The king was up on his throne, rather bored if his posture were any indication. He was a little heavier than the last time, a little puffier along the jaw, muscle gone soft from sitting in Denerim and hearing…

Well, the current dispute seemed confined to spring goat pasturage rights along the River Dane. 

Solona looked resolutely at her hands as they waited, but Anders heard the moment that the king noticed their presence. Alistair choked in the middle of his thoughts about the importance of sharing, and when Anders looked up at him, he saw that the man had gone as white as a sheet below his golden circlet of rank. 

Alistair stood up, rattling the wooden throne. “Everyone out,” he announced curtly. 

This sparked a litany of objections from the assembled crowd, and Alistair flushed red to cover the white. 

“I said ‘out’ in my king voice,” he said. “That means out, or nobody’s getting any pasture this year at all.” With some grumbling, the people began to clear out. Alistair remained standing at the top of the stairs, staring down at them.

Not at ‘them,’ Anders realized. At Solona, who remained seated with her hands folded in her lap. 

Anders wasn’t sure whether Solona preferred that he stand or sit, which was awkward. Actually, awkward was being trapped in a room with two people who were thinking very hard at each other, of each other, and not saying anything at all.

“I, for one, was riveted to hear whose goats were going to win,” Anders said, when the pressure of remaining silent grew crushing. “Is every day as king so thrilling? No wonder you never got around to abolishing the Circles.”

Solona stepped on his foot without standing. Alistair ignored him. 

“Thirteen years,” the king said softly. “Thirteen years, and you couldn’t even give me a little warning?” 

Anders supposed that he was not the only one who had found Solona remiss on her correspondence.

“I sent a letter,” Solona said.

“ _Twelve_ years ago,” Alistair growled. 

Solona finally stood, tucking her hair back behind her ears. 

“It took longer than I thought,” she said. “Anyway, I was successful. I have it. Morrigan’s cure for the Grey Warden taint.” 

Alistair reeled a little. “Sol--I...Maker, I was afraid you were _dead._ Where have you been? I didn’t mean…”

“You want to do this here?” Solona asked, voice a little shocky. “In the middle of your throne room?” 

Alistair grimaced. “No. No.” He gestured at the stairs at the rear of the throne room, and turned to go. Anders would have remained seated, considering his own presence supremely unnecessary to a confrontation between the woman he’d grown rather attached to over the past few weeks and her former lover, but Solona grabbed his arm and tugged him after her like she was clutching a safety blanket. 

Alistair glared at Anders when he followed Solona up into what appeared to be the king’s personal chambers, and then glared harder when Alistair actually identified him. 

Anders thought of all of the places he’d rather be at that moment, even considering some of the less-than-spectacular places life had taken him. The Blackmarsh. Darktown. The Deep Roads. 

“You brought _him_ here? I’ve gone thirteen years without a single torch-wielding mob at this place, and you brought a terrorist as a plus-one?” Alistair demanded, hand groping for a sword he no longer wore at his hip. Yes, Solona’s ex-Templar ex-lover was not a person Anders particularly cared to assist in becoming an ex-Grey Warden. 

Solona did all but roll her eyes at the king. “I brought along the greatest living Grey Warden healer,” she pointed out. That would have been a nice compliment, if Anders knew of any other living Grey Warden healers. 

She hadn’t let go of his arm, and neither Alistair nor Anders seemed to have missed that point.

“Are we going to need a healer?” Alistair asked, eyes narrowed. “Are you that angry at me still? Whatever awful scheme Morrigan’s come up with this time can wait a few days--I’m not in danger of taking my Calling today. Surely we can pretend to be adults who can talk with each other for a little while.” Anders thought that was a sound plan, and one which might allow Anders to leave and not come back. 

Solona looked out the window: it featured horribly tacky scenes of mabari pulling down deer in green and brown stained glass. Snow was still falling outside. 

“I’m not angry,” she said. “I came here as soon as I found the cure. And you were right. You needed to get married, and I needed to leave. I’m here today as Commander of the Grey, and that’s it.”

Alistair’s eyes flicked again at Anders, but he blustered on regardless. “I was _wrong,_ and I shouldn’t have listened to Eamon. And things are different now, I--”

Solona seemed to have stopped listening to him. She set her satchel on the ground and began pulling things out of it, including the lead-locked case. Her movements were quick and jerky, and Anders recalled that Solona always moved faster when things were getting scary. 

“Lock the doors,” she told Anders. 

“Wait,” said the king.

Anders had never considered himself a loyal citizen of Ferelden, and his commander had given him a direct order, so he turned to latch the door they’d come through, even if he felt deep misgivings about it. 

He had to move past Alistair to get the door behind him, but the king’s eyes were fixed on the onyx blade in Solona’s hand. 

“This is a blood-thing, isn’t it,” Alistair said, sounding deeply unhappy. “How can you trust the bloody swamp witch with a blood-thing?”

“All Warden magic is blood magic, Alistair. And we trusted her before,” Solona said, eyebrow cocked at the king. “And it worked.” 

The king colored. “The stakes were somewhat lower than cutting someone with a scary dagger.” 

Solona gave him an arch look. “You just took your pants off, but _I_ had to cut off the archdemon’s head. So yes, I trust her with this--but I’ll take most of the risk this time too, anyway.” 

Alistair sputtered. “You’re really rolling out all our nastiest Grey Warden secrets, aren’t you?” 

“Victory, Vigilance, Sacrifice,” Solona quoted. “I never wanted to be a Warden, Alistair. And you need to not be one anymore. Let’s just get this over with.” Her back was showing that core of steel again. She did not want to be there, Anders perceived. Or she was afraid to be there. Solona was afraid of several things, Anders had realized: the dark, being alone, asking for favors. Not that she was letting that stop her. 

Alistair sighed, deeply unhappy. “I didn’t have blood magic on my calendar today. It was to be goats all afternoon. Fine then. What do you need me to do?”

Solona got a grip on the dagger. Anders was also extremely interested to hear the details of the ritual before it started, but Solona seemed even less interested in explaining her plans than usual.

“Just hold out your hand, Alistair. No, Alistair. Not your sword hand, the other one.”

Grimacing, the king stuck out his left hand. Solona carefully cut along the meat of the man’s palm. As quickly as blood welled up, the dagger seemed to absorb it. But the cut remained. 

“Now you,” she said, turning to Anders. Her gaze was forthright and determined. But he hesitated, nonetheless. Blood magic. Nothing good ever came from blood magic. 

Solona grimaced at his indecision. “You’re not going to want me to do this more than once,” she warned him. 

“It would help if you’d told me what ‘this’ involved in the first place,” Anders pointed out.

“Oh, she doesn’t tell you anything either? Nice to know people don’t change,” Alistair muttered, poking at his palm and getting blood on his hands for his trouble. 

Solona’s jaw clenched, and she grabbed at Anders’ left arm. He made a feint to pull it from her.

“You’ll be fine, I _promise_ _,”_ she hissed at him. 

Anders was still absorbing her choice of singular pronouns there when she got his palm and carved a twin slash to Alistair’s into it. 

It throbbed, and Anders was suddenly very aware of the beat of his pulse in his ears. This wasn’t preparatory to the ritual; the spell had already started. The dagger--or something--was waking up. 

Solona took a deep breath, looking at the dagger. She shot a glance at him, the line of her mouth seeming to wobble. She was pale and pretty in her blue dress, and the black dagger looked incongruous in her fist. 

Then she gave a little sigh and turned the dagger in her hand. Anders thought he realized the direction of her movement a heartbeat before the king did, but they were both too slow to stop her from driving the blade of the dagger into her gut. 

Everyone in the room screamed. 

Anders dove for Solona, Alistair for the dagger, and it was only Anders’ swift shove to the king’s shoulder that kept him from pulling the dagger back out.

“Stop, you idiot!” Anders yelled. “She’ll bleed out if you pull it!” 

The king staggered away, eyes wide and shocky. 

Anders managed to wrap an arm around the girl and pull her over to a divan. His hand was bleeding all over her, but none of Solona’s blood had welled up around the dagger. It was drinking it all in. 

Half his mind was instinctively analyzing entry paths, calculating organs that might have been punctured, and the other half was screeching her name. 

“Maker’s bloody balls, you stupid woman, what in the Void were you thinking, this is the worst idea you’ve ever had and you made me a Warden,” he muttered, fingers finding her pulse. It was strong and rapid under his two fingertips on her neck, and he curled his fingers to clutch at the warmth of her skin. 

“Yes,” Solona said. Her voice was tremulous but audible. “I did. My responsibility.” 

Anders put his hands around the place of her wound, about to call as much healing magic as he’d ever summoned. 

“Wait,” she breathed, setting a hand over his. “Wait until after the spell.” 

Anders didn’t like the quality of her voice, but he reluctantly nodded. 

Solona closed her eyes, and Anders couldn’t hear what she was whispering, but he abruptly heard the Blightsong. It rang in his ears, seeming to fill the room.

“Oh, Andraste,” the king moaned, sinking to his knees behind Anders. He had to hear it too. 

The song was angry. The song was _furious_ _._

Pain rippled through Anders, as bad as it had been at his Joining. Worse. He could feel the taint within him, nearly taste it. It seemed to condense inside him. Places inside him--muscles, bones, sinews--shrieked as the taint pulled into points and _moved_. 

Pain moved along every nerve in his body as the taint bobbed along it, thousands of balls of evil traveling through his body and moving with gelid slowness towards the open gash in his hand. His back arched, but movement made it worse. 

A drop of blackness congealed at the edge of the wound on his palm under Anders’ horrified gaze. Another. Then it was dripping away, oozing out of his hand and falling on the floor. It hissed on the stone tiles like acid, eating away at the carpet and scarring the granite. More than Anders thought could have possibly been inside him. 

People were shouting outside of the room now--the king’s guards, Anders assumed--and also inside it. Alistair. Anders. 

Solona’s lips moved inaudibly, and Anders saw the same blackness flowing away around the knife wound in her gut. The knife was drinking it in; not a drop stained her dress or fell onto the king’s hideous, spotted deer hide divan. 

And then it was over. Anders saw clean red blood flowing around the edge of the cut on his hand. It began to stain Solona’s dress. The song dissipated, shrinking into the dagger. 

He drew a shaky breath. It somehow felt like he could open his lungs more than he had, five minutes before. 

Solona had fallen silent. 

Anders spared one glance for the king, wiping blood on his tunic. His mouth hung open as he looked at Solona’s still form. 

“Is she--” Alistair whispered. 

“Tell your guards you’re not dead before they break down the bloody door,” Anders snapped at him. “Then bring me as many lyrium potions as you can find.” 

For a king, he was good at following orders. He went. 

It was just a simple stab wound now. The dagger was inert in Anders’ hands. It no longer repelled him. It was a black hole to his mystical senses. 

Anders tried to pretend that she was just another warm body washed into his clinic. Another refugee brushing against his life. Someone other than the only person in the world who still cared whether he lived or died. Who felt responsible for him, rather than complicit with him. 

Alistair came back after a few minutes and stuck a bottle in his hand. Anders ripped the cork out with his teeth and drained it without looking at it. Lyrium, in a Templar concentration. oo dilute. 

“I need another,” he said, senses still fixed inches within Solona’s body. Another bottle was provided; Anders thought it would be enough. 

Anders waved off the next, and Alistair went and seated himself on the edge of the divan, at Solona’s head. His uninjured hand dangled close to Solona’s blonde hair, but he pulled it back before he made contact. 

“Hold her legs steady,” Anders told him. “I’m going to pull the dagger out.” 

“I thought you said not to do that,” the king objected, voice still high and panicked. 

Anders scoffed. “She can’t keep it in for the rest of her life. I’ve got the internal bleeding stopped. Just hold her still.”

Anders took the dagger in his hands, and this time his bloody palms just made it slippery. It didn’t want his untainted blood. He took a deep breath and slowly eased it out in the same direction it had entered. Solona coughed, her eyelids flickering. 

But Anders had done this part a thousand times before. His magic neatly sealed up the wound, the cut on her stomach shrinking until there was nothing but unblemished skin under the clotting blood. 

Solona grimaced, twisting as though to feel for the place where she’d been injured. Then she opened her eyes to see Anders staring at her, relief warring with fury inside him. 

“You absolute idiot,” Anders told her. “You scared me to death.” 

Solona smiled broadly. “I’ll make it up to you.” 

And Anders, who was still a healer, no longer a Warden, and more grateful than he’d ever been in his life, both laughed and cried when he leaned in to kiss her. 

* * *

The king insisted that they stay in the palace. When Solona retorted that she was no longer Commander of the Grey, Alistair pointed out that she was still Arl of Amaranthine. When Solona promptly resigned that title, Alistair pointed out that this made her a common subject of the crown. When Solona quoted a few points of the Fereldan constitution at Alistair, he got a glint in his eye that pointed to well-suppressed autocratic tendencies and threatened her that if she didn’t promise to recuperate for at least one night, he’d tell Eamon that Solona was back in Denerim and had agreed to marry him. That made Solona quiet, and both of them a little sad, but Solona acquiesced, and they were led to a suite of rooms that the senechal informed them had once belonged to Queen Rowan.

That was when Anders offered to go back to Bella’s brewery. He thought he understood why Solona had only asked for one room. 

“Why?” she asked him, looking honestly confused. 

Anders’ eyes widened when she started pulling off her bloody dress. It didn’t seem like her to tease. 

Solona regarded the fabric with dismay. “I’ll never get the blood out of this, you’re right.”

She balled it up and pulled the other out of her pack. 

“I’m sure the king would buy you another,” Anders said, sounding churlish even to his own ears. 

Solona pulled her second dress over her head and backed up for Anders to button it behind her neck.

“I’m sure he would,” she said, amused. “But we’re not staying. He’ll calm down in a bit, and then he’ll realize we should go.” 

Anders took note of the collective plural pronoun there. 

“You’re not?” Anders asked. “The King of Ferelden seems to be in love with you, and I thought the Grey Warden mission ended in Denerim.” 

“The King of Ferelden,” Solona said, words precise, “will wake up tomorrow and remember all the good reasons why I didn’t stay in Denerim the last time.”

Anders shook his head. “Things are changing, Solona. The Circles are gone. The Divine is preaching for mages to join the world. I think he’d marry you despite everything.” 

He’d done that. Made a world where people like Solona could get what they wanted. Justice would have approved. 

“I didn’t want him to love me despite everything. I wanted someone to love me because of everything,” Solona said, ducking her head with a wry twist of her mouth. “I was young enough that I thought I got to choose.” 

“Hey,” Anders said, cupping the back of her neck and forcing her to look at him. “You do. You deserve to have what you want.” 

“Yeah?” she said, looking skeptical, but a smile beginning to twist the corner of her mouth. “Maybe I will.” 

Anders felt a flush grow across his cheeks. 

Solona’s smile widened. She cracked her shoulders as she rolled them. Then she picked up his injured hand, critically examined it, and then healed it up with a casual flourish. Anders recalled that there had been more than one Grey Warden healer in Amaranthine, once upon a time. 

“Well, this was the end of my itinerary,” Solona said. “I don’t need a Warden anymore, and you’re not one.” 

Her eyes did not make it a dismissal, but an invitation.

“Hmmm,” Anders said. “You know, you could have tested that dagger with me back in West Hill. You didn’t need me to come all this way with you.” 

“Didn’t I?” Solona asked, now grinning at him. 

Anders put his hands on her waist. The dress really did look lovely on her. Maybe they’d go to Rivain next, where all the dresses would suit her. “Solona, is it possible that you dragged me all the way to Denerim just to make your ex-boyfriend jealous?” 

She blushed very prettily. “That was, perhaps, one small, initial reason…”

He laughed and pulled her closer to him.

“Then let’s go back in there and tell him we’ll be staying at the brewery, and this time I’ll kiss you with tongue,” Anders said. 

“Good,” Solona said. “That’s what I want you to do.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Kinkshame me on Tumblr @ YoursTrulyCommanderShepard and Twitter @YTCShepard.
> 
> [Nobody Knows How Loud Your Heart Gets, by Lucius](https://open.spotify.com/track/6TYWYyhQrU0qMVoHLpy328).  
> 


End file.
